Who’s in (or out of) a community?

The term “community-based policy-making” was new to me. It had seemed intuitive what it may entail — engagement with a community — but our dissection of this term in class showed otherwise.

At first glance, “community-based” follows a grassroots approach where policy ideas and solutions are generated from the ground up. However, where it gets tricky is thinking about who that community represents.

From our discussions, we thought of a community as a group of people coming together with shared interests. But, would individuals who are part of that community have to be self-identified? The idea of self-identification concerned me. For instance, in a physically-based community in which you reside, you may or may not strongly identify with that community. Or the resources (time or otherwise) that you hold can impact whether you can afford to participate and build identification with that community. Regardless of whether you identify with a community or not, the ultimate decisions that the community makes can have profound or incremental impacts on your life.

Communities and groups are people are intrinsically exclusionary; however, for community-based policy making, communities need to be inclusive of other communities to ensure that the pursuit of a policy which meets the needs of one community does not come at a detriment of another. Where community-based policy-making can further make strides in advancing equity is putting into action tools and processes that includes the voices of those who are not always listened to, whether they actively participate in, identify strongly with, or feel they belong in a community or not.